Category: World Literature

Memory Multitudes

During the night he went through his vast store of memories. He remembered the hundreds of people who had passed through his life. He remembered pupils and teachers, friends and enemies. He remembered books and…

It’s Not Easy

But the love revealed in Jesus, simple as it sounds, is terribly arduous. That is why the history of our faith so often reads like a history of our resistance to love. Give us rules….

The Blood-stained Face of History

Could this really be socialism—with the labor camps of Kolyma, with the horrors of collectivization, with the cannibalism and the millions of deaths during the famine? Yes, there were times when a very different understanding…

Nine Lives

In Les Misérables, Jean Valjean saves at least nine people: two children in Montreuil-sur-Mer from a fire; Fauchelevent from being crushed to death by a cart; Cosette from her troubled life with the Thénardiers; Fantine…

Just One Little Onion

“You see, Alyoshechka,” Grushenka turned to him, laughing nervously, “I’m boasting to Rakitka that I gave an onion, but I’m not boasting to you, I’ll tell you about it for a different reason. It’s just…

Stick with the Gospel

Ivan has maintained that p­eople bear no responsibility for their wishes—­ “who has not the right to wish?”—­a position that directly contradicts the Sermon on the Mount, which deems not just bad actions but also…

Today’s One-Liner (#242)

Brothers, do not be afraid of men’s sin, love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on earth. –Zosima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

To Learn by Heart

In a more general vein: that which we know by heart will ripen and deploy within us. The memorized text interacts with our temporal existence, modifying our experiences, being dialectically modified by them. The stronger…